Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) (22 page)

Automo took another step. Lauro felt too surprised to move, to run or attack or even fall down and surrender. Could any of this be true?

“
Well, I have learned differently since then, Small One. The Gray and the Brown… they think they have discovered the Prophet, do they? Yes, I can see it in your memories. Traveller forbade such sight, but I see it nonetheless! They understand
nothing
.”

“
Then you are Legion, and you are a traitor to the Light!” screamed Mudlo, suddenly storming past Lauro angrily. The prince’s mouth moved soundlessly in horror as he tried to process the storm of new threats assembling in his mind.

“
NO!”
shouted Automo, and Mudlo stopped in his tracks with a strangled sob. Lauro saw that he had been about to put a foot on the first step… and that his eyes were filled with tears. Were all the old beliefs wasted, then? Was the whole world, every prophecy and faith… a cheat?

“
No,” continued the Red Aura, quieter… but not by much. “I am not one of them. They swore their souls to darkness… I have merely refused to be bound by Dark
or
Light!” He gestured angrily with the Midnight Sword, and lightning crackled in the chamber’s roof.

“
It’s the same thing!” yelled Mudlo, putting a hand under his bulky coat for the fire-hurler he kept hidden there. Lauro pressed hands to his head, tearing at his shaven temples, trying desperately to make sense of what was happening.

“
Don’t try to use your Thunderbolt on me, Ranger,” sneered Automo. “I made it, and every one like it. Wanderwillow and his spies always wanted something for their little private war… so I gave them what I thought would best serve their causes. It won’t harm me an ounce!”

Mudlo froze. Lauro let his hands drop, a horrible realization coming over him.

“
You…
you’re
the reason the Golden Nation is winning the war out there…” he said quietly. “You’ve been building these unearthly weapons for both sides…
You
caused this war in the first place!” His voice grew steadier- and
angrier
- as he went on, despite the utter hopelessness of the situation. “You’re not just a traitor to Vast… you’re a traitor to everyone!”

“
I will
RULE
everyone!” snapped Automo, flourishing
Ker’junas
in a flash of flame. “There is only
one
way to peace,
Prince
, and that is to rule! To put not just an island, or a sliver of the Otherworld under my direct sway, like those fools in Brown and Gray… entire
peoples
! Whole continents! Wherever the arrogant Aura have not turned their gaze, my rule will extend, and my power encompass!”

“
Like Sheolus,” Mudlo spat, knees wobbling from exhaustion, but face iron hard. “You’re just like him, even if you won’t admit it. You don’t even call yourself part of the Aura anymore! You’re just another… damned… demon!”

Automo took another step down, opening his mouth in rage, then shut it suddenly, cocking his head as if he was being made to listen to a sound he did not like.

Steamclaw growled, and got up from where it had lain at the side of Automo’s throne. Its eyes blazed with fury at its master’s enemies.
I
knew
not to trust that blasted creature!
Lauro thought.

“
You have no further purpose,” Automo snarled suddenly. Lauro laughed out loud, totally without humor.

“
Why did you send your hell-hound for us in the first place, Traitor? What purpose could we possibly serve?”

The Red Aura grimaced, as if listening to that unheard sound again. “You were needed. Traveller pulls the threads of Destiny, still. The Prophet must be the first to hold
Ker’junas
, it was written in dreams… and so it had to be. But Fate has loosened since then… your own arrival in place of the Prophet proves that. With… with what I have been… com-
told
, I now have the proof I need. You’ve broken your destiny, Lauro Vale, and the destinies of countless others. The old prophecies mean nothing, now.”

Lauro felt like dying, just curling up and letting himself go, just then. But instead he spat at the Red Aura’s feet, willing himself to harden beyond call and bear the burden, at least until he could repair the damage his path had done.
Will I never regain Honor? Does it even matter?

“
Then kill me, Traitor of the Heavens! Be done with it!” Lauro glared at Automo with as much venom as he could muster in the face of boundless fear.

“
I… cannot interfere so far. Not yet,” the Red Aura sneered. “Fate is unraveling, but it is not destroyed… yet.” He began to glow with a blinding internal light, the color and shade of blood on ice. Lauro shaded his eyes against the glare, as did Mudlo. “But I have no need, Small Ones! My pets will be your bane!”

“
No!”
shouted someone through the roaring wind and heat that ripped through the air like an invisible storm. Lauro couldn’t tell if it had been himself, or the ranger.

“
My Red Hall will be your grave!”
roared Automo, as the wind itself began to catch fire around the would-be heroes.
“The forge of Automo, first god among the spirits of the Aura, will be your doom!”

“
NO!”
screamed someone, and this time Lauro knew it was himself. With a titanic effort he managed to bow his head against the storm of fire and wind around him, reaching for the handles of his halfswords at the same time.

Fool!
Something inside him screamed.
Sky Stride! Don’t fight… STRIDE!

Without thinking, Lauro reacted, pulling his blades from their sheathes and whipping them in the direction of Automo’s flickering, insubstantial form. He lashed out with his mind, heedless, and heard a sharp, anguished cry from the firestorm that Automo was becoming. He had attacked the traitor Aura, Sky Striding with his mind!

Lightning flashed along the blades of his weapons, striking at the heart of the storm…

…
but it was too late. With a crackle and a flash, Automo was gone, and with him the rest of the firestorm. The platform was deathly quiet. Lauro tensed, ready for battle anyway, his blades glowing blue with the energy of Sky.
Everything has changed…

“
Burn me in the Blaze,” Mudlo growled, “But I know a summons when I see one. He’s being manipulated by Sheolus just as surely as that bloody draik is!”

Steamclaw. Lauro narrowed his eyes, watching the draik as it crouched near the throne, ready to pounce on them at the slightest sign of weakness. Mudlo had somehow managed to get his fire-hurler out, though it looked more than a bit singed.

“
Ready…” the prince growled, trying to blot out the blasphemous memory of the past minutes from his mind.

“
Rea…” began Mudlo, but Steamclaw sprang before he finished.

Lauro hurled a halfsword. Mudlo fired his weapon. Steamclaw tumbled the last few meters, thudding to a bloody halt at the bottom of the stairs, smoke curling from one eye, a blade embedded in its side.

“
Can’t say I feel sorrowful over that,” Lauro said, chuckling darkly.

“
No,” was Mudlo’s grim reply. “But there is more than enough to sorrow over already.”

Lauro nodded, feeling numb. Yes. There is. Far, far too much…

The chamber was in an uproar. It sounded as if a storm had broken beneath the vaulted bridges. Sparks still jumped at random through the air, and Lauro could hear the grindings and clangings of vast machines coming up from below.

Mudlo glanced over the edge of the bridge. “The workshop is rising, Lauro Vale. We’d best find a way out of this place before it truly does become our grave.”

Lauro Vale. The way he said it reminded Lauro of Avarine.

“
I would have liked, just once more, to…” he whispered.

“
What did you say?”

“…
Nothing. Let’s go.” Mudlo replaced his fire-hurler where it belonged, but Lauro left his blade in Steamclaw’s corpse. No point in getting closer than he had to, and one would serve as well as two. The noises of machinery and devilry from below grew louder. The two companions began to jog, then run, then
sprint
as the noises grew ever more thunderous. Out of the corner of his eyes Lauro could see huge dark shapes rising from the magma. Cursing, he spoke to Mudlo as he ran.

“
Would the traitor… that burned fool… would he destroy his workshop to get at us?”

“
I… ah, doubt it,” Mudlo huffed, keeping his pace quick as they sped back towards the stone doors. “He won’t have to… the, ah, forge, should… ah, take care of us, itself!” The ranger’s speech was jolting and broken. Lauro frowned, thinking.

“
What exactly do you know about…” but he never finished the question.

Gusts of flame leaped up to the ceiling on all sides as the bridge suddenly became a simple pathway among a forest of bristling machines. It was simple as a blink: one moment, there was nothing between the slim white bridge and the abyss; next, there were hundreds of interlocking metal platforms stretching in every direction, glowing with unbearable heat and dripping magma at every crevice.

On every platform stood a machine or contraption of different shape and use. There were foundries and metalforges, casting molds and assembly lines, all mixed in a haphazard array that was both terrifying and astounding… All had simply
sprung up
at the will of the Red Aura. Lauro almost stopped to gape, but then the wind carried him a scent of death and rotting horror and blood-spilling like he had never before encountered.

Every machine in the workshop slowly turned to point or lean in their direction. Lauro cursed and kept running. As they pulled up in front of the stone doors, Mudlo snapped a sentence in the nymphtongue that Lauro could only assume to be a prayer. Something black and misty was leaking out from between the almost nonexistent space between the doors, growing steadily by the second, sucking the bright red light of the Aura’s forge into a darkness deeper than night. And it was
talking
… loudly, in words his ears could not make sense of, but his mind understood.

DRINK YOU EAT YOU BREAK YOU BITE YOU TURN YOU BLACK AND RED AND SUCK THE BLOOD FROM YOUR HEART AND SMASH YOU SOUL INTO SPLINTERS TO STICK IN THE SOULS OF YOUR LOVER AND-

“
No! Be gone!” Mudlo screamed, hurling himself madly at the doors, beating on the stone with his fists and even slamming his head against it. The mist was not hurt; if anything it seemed to be
laughing
as it nearly leaped from the door, into Mudlo’s body, disappearing in an instant.

“
STOP! BY THE AURA, STOP!” Lauro screamed, pulling his friend away from the door. But it was too late. Mudlo spasmed and contorted, blood seeping from where he clawed at his own neck.

“
It’s… pulling at me, Lauro…” he gasped hoarsely. “It’s going to rot me from the inside out… I’m going to… ah… AH… AHHHH!”

The prince felt himself lifted bodily and hurled back by the frenzied ranger, who leaped over him as he fell, sprinting back along the bridge towards Automo’s throne.

“
Stop!” Lauro called desperately, scrambling to his feet. “We need to stop it together! Mudlo!!!!” Before he could start forward, one of the machines nearest the bridge lashed out with a long black chain attached to the arm of a crane. Lauro dodged the heavy weight, barely, and hacked at the chain with his glowing blade. The chain snapped and the weight flew wildly out to smash a long mechanical claw that had been about to stab Lauro in the back. “Bloody machines!”

Five steps further, another machine attacked, and then another. Time seemed to slow, and the deadly inner silence of combat enveloped Lauro. The forge itself turned on him, pouring magma in his path, slashing and hacking and stabbing with movable machines, sending mechanical beasts with red eyes like a draik’s to swarm him as he struggled closer to Mudlo, who had collapsed beside Steamclaw’s body.

Three machines down… then four… then seven… then twelve! Lauro knew he would have died seconds, then minutes, before… but the fiery wind that swept through the machines, empowering them, also empowered
him
. The Power of Sky filled him, protected him, and shattered him. He was unbeatable, but he was paying with the force of his life.